that the rest of his companions be brought from Ḥamāh and dispatched to Egypt; after that, all trace of them disappeared, and no one knows in what manner they met their end.
On the morning of Tuesday, the eighteenth of Jumādā II of this year, the emir Sayf al-Dīn Arghūn Shāh entered the God-protected Damascus as its governor-deputy. He had come from Aleppo, which he turned over to the emir Fakhr al-Dīn Iyās the Chamberlain. Arghūn Shāh entered the city in full pomp, clad in a robe of honour and a two-tailed turban, and in appearance he closely resembled Tankiz (may Allah have mercy on him). He took up residence in Dār al-Saʿādah and ruled from there; he was a man of stern discipline and gallant spirit (1).
On Thursday the twenty-third of the same month the funeral prayer was held for the emir Qarāsanqur (2) in the Umayyad Mosque and outside Bāb al-Naṣr. The qāḍīs, dignitaries, and emirs attended, and he was buried in his own mausoleum in Maydān al-Ḥasā, near the Karīmī Mosque.
The customary lamp-lighting was observed on the night of the fifteenth [of Shaʿbān], yet the people themselves refrained because of soaring prices, delayed rainfall, and the scant harvest. A ratl minus one uqiyyah of wheat cost one dirham, and even that was stale; all other goods were exorbitant. Oil sold at four and a half dirhams a ratl—the same price for sirj (3), soap, and rice—while ʿanbarīs cost three dirhams a ratl, and every other foodstuff followed suit. Nothing was relatively affordable except meat, at roughly two and a quarter dirhams. Most of the inhabitants of Ḥawrān travelled from distant places, bringing wheat for provisions and seed from Damascus, where a sifted mudd of wheat sold for four dirhams. They were in dire straits—Allah is the One to whom hope and supplication are directed. Anyone who travelled found it hard to obtain water for himself, his horse, or his pack-animal, for every watering place along the route had run dry; Jerusalem was in even worse and more desperate condition.
Then, in the last ten days of Shaʿbān of this same year, Allah—glorified and exalted be He, to Whom belong praise and favour—showed mercy to His servants by sending a rescuing downpour that revived both people and land. The populace returned to their homes once water filled the wadis and pools, and the Birkat Zuraʿ overflowed after having been bone-dry. Good tidings of this reached the deputy of the sultanate, and it was reported that water had spread throughout the land and that snow lay deep on Mount Banī Hilāl (4). The mountains surrounding Damascus were likewise blanketed with very heavy snow. Hearts were reassured and great relief was felt—praise and thanks be to Allah—for this occurred on the final day of November.
On Tuesday, the twenty-first of Ramaḍān, Shaykh ʿIzz al-Dīn Muḥammad (5) al-Ḥanbalī of al-Ṣāliḥiyyah passed away; he had been the preacher of the Muzafarī Mosque and was one of the well-known righteous—may Allah have mercy on him. He was often seen prompting the deceased with the words of testimony after their burial; may Allah, in turn, prompt him with His decisive proof and make him firm with the unshakable word in this life and in the Hereafter.